Certain types of commodity and/or industrial items can be packaged by placing the desired product(s) in a covering material, then applying a closure clip or clips to end portions of the covering material to secure the product(s) therein. For non-flowable piece goods, the piece goods can be held individually in a respective clipped package, or as a group of goods in a single package. The covering material can be any suitable material, typically a casing and/or netting material. Generally described, when packaging a piece good product in netting, the product is manually pushed through a netting chute. The product can include, by way of example, a non-flowable semi-solid and/or solid object such as a meat product, including whole or half hams, turkey, chicken, and the like. The netting chute holds a length of a netting sleeve over the exterior thereof. A first downstream end portion of the netting is typically closed using a first clip. As the product exits the netting chute, it is covered with the netting. An operator can then orient the product inside the netting between the discharge end of the chute and the clipped first end portion of the netting. The operator can then pull the netting so that the netting is held relatively tight (typically stretched or in tension) over the product. The operator then uses his/her hands to compress or gather the open end of the netting (upstream of the product), then manually applies a clip to the netting, typically using a Tipper Tie® double clipper apparatus. A clip attachment apparatus or “clippers” are well known to those of skill in the art and include those available from Tipper Tie, Inc., of Apex, N.C., including product numbers Z3214, Z3202, and Z3200. Examples of clip attachment apparatus and/or packaging apparatus are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,389,533; 3,499,259; 4,683,700; 5,161,347, and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/951,578 (Pub. No. US-2005-0039419-A1); the contents of these documents are hereby incorporated by reference as if recited in full herein.
The double clipper concurrently applies two clips to the netting proximate the open (upstream) end of the package. One clip defines the first end portion of the next package and the other defines the trailing or second end portion of the package then being closed. A cutting mechanism incorporated in the clipper apparatus can sever the two packages before the enclosed package is removed from the clipper apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,713 describes a double clipper apparatus used to apply two clips to a casing covering. U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,701 proposes a clipper with a clip attachment mechanism configured to selectively fasten a single clip or two clips simultaneously. The mechanism has two punches, one of which is driven directly by a pneumatic cylinder and the other of which is connected to the first punch using a pin and key assembly. The pin and key assembly allows the punches to be coupled or decoupled to the pneumatic cylinder drive to apply one single clip or two clips simultaneously. U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,424 proposes an apparatus for movement of U-shaped clips along a rail. The apparatus includes a clip feed for advancing clips on a guide rail and the arm is reciprocally driven by a piston and cylinder arrangement. The contents of each of these patents are hereby incorporated by reference as if recited in full herein.
To place a sleeve of the selected covering on the product chute, an automated or semi-automated nicker may be employed. This type of process is often described by those of skill in the art as “shirring” or “rucking”. In the past, ruckers have been configured to reciprocate a netting tube or chute vertically to load the netting. In some prior art devices, the netting is stretched over the chute and stationary spring-loaded fingers circumferentially surround the tube and engage with openings in netting to pull segments of netting over the outer surface of the netting chute so that the netting covers a substantial portion of the length of the chute. In operation, the fingers flex from a normal horizontal orientation to contact the netting and carry the netting down during an upward stroke of the netting chute and slide over the netting during the downward stroke of the chute. An example of a prior art rucker that uses circumferentially mounted paddles that flex downward when the chute travels down to avoid the netting is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,273,481, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference as if recited in full herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,552 proposes another example of a net rucker device. This type of device employs two opposing wheels, each with a concave receiving cavity which receives a portion of a temporary tubular carrier sleeve. The wheels are rotated to pull netting from a roll onto a carrier sleeve as the carrier sleeve is translated vertically.
Unfortunately, conventional ruckers may not be suitable for shirring one or more of fixed diameter materials, delicate compression fit netting, or materials that may be susceptible to breaking and/or have less resilience than conventional elastic open weave netting types. In addition, conventional ruckers may not be suitably configured to operate with non-cylindrical product chutes, may require undue space allocations in a plant (particularly for longer netting chutes) and/or may not operate with desired speed.